Pot Edward Island II

I'm back from vacation, with lots of stories to tell about how I covered more of this country by air in the last two weeks than anyone should.

Sadly (or happily, depending on your point of view) I have a ton of work to catch up on, but I did want to show you this from the National Post, where the guy who wrote the Pot Edward Island article tries to defend himself.... funny stuff:

The author of an article in a Boston newspaper that claimed Prince Edward Island was a marijuana paradise has fired back at Canadians who derided his story as wildly inaccurate.

Alan Earls, a reporter for the Boston Phoenix weekly, had described P. E. I. as "Pot Edward Island," and claimed among other things that it has become a haven for dope growers fuelled by cheap Quebec electricity.

In reality, P. E. I. gets most of its power from New Brunswick, and Denis Morin, and RCMP spokesman quoted in the article about the seizure of increasing amounts of marijuana in the province later said that the figures were "quite minor in the scale of things for P. E. I. and Canada."

In a response to his critics in Monday's edition of the newspaper, Mr. Earls said they were motivated by "anger that a dumb American would have the audacity to find fault with anything Canadian (it is tough, I'll admit), let alone anything having to do with Canada's garden spot, P. E. I."

Fuck you too.

EDITED TO ADD:

I found his full response on the website of the self-agrandizing rag he writes for. I feel compelled, in the interest of fairness, to share it all.... which is more accurate or fair than this hack was:

ALAN R. EARLES RESPONDS
Prince Edward Island is probably the nicest place I’ve ever visited. There, I’ve said it. Unfortunately, when I’ve traveled there (twice, in 2006 and 2008), I have also discovered that, despite the fact that it looks like paradise, it has problems just like other places. In particular, the provincial newspapers have had quite a few stories about local pot growers. So, I got interested and wrote an article for the Phoenix about this aspect of PEI that is not well known to outsiders and which, in fact, probably should worry islanders.

Folks up north nailed me on a couple of reporting errors — like my statement that PEI imports “cheap” electricity from Quebec (it actually comes from New Brunswick). I was also told repeatedly by Canadian critics that I had named the wrong person as director of the PEI Federation of Agriculture. After re-checking my facts, however, I found that I was indeed right and my friends in Canada were wrong: the holder of the title is in fact Mike Nabuurs (though I did miss the last two consonants on his name in my piece — sorry Mike!).

The article was not meant to suggest that PEI has become a giant exporter of pot or a major narcotics haven north of the border. Rather, the point was to contrast an ongoing and seemingly worsening situation with PEI’s image as a clean, peaceful, and serene destination. That this situation could worsen or could impact the larger picture of drug trafficking in New England and in the Maritimes seems implicit. The minor factual errors in the story do not undercut the accuracy of this message.

The errors weren't "minor", they were throughout the entire story, and most of the premise. He tries to sound like the "cheap" electricity comes from New Brunswick, when in fact, it just isn't cheap.

See that Colbertesque truthiness at work. Say you got the name wrong, not the entire idea of the cheap electricity.

From the tortured prose in the original, and the slick ass covering in the response, this clown is the sort of guy I warn people about... the reporter with the story already written in their head before they even talk to anyone.

Now, on to my vacation stories.

Pot Edward Island?

An article from the Boston Phoenix has some of my fellow Islanders very upset, branding Prince Edward Island as a pot grower's paradise.

A link to the story here

A local CBC story about the Tourism Minister expressing rage here.

The article is based on one shooting of an elderly gent who was operating a grow op in rural PEI. Thing is, that was in 2004 and this is not.... not that I blame a farmer for trying out new crops, potatoes don't fetch what they used to.

Plus, the writer is a little overwrought, if you get my drift. Here is the lead paragraph:

When you think of PEI, you probably come up with crisp, clean-cut tourist-brochure images: lush and rolling hills, tranquil ocean beaches, villages of whitewashed cottages and, inevitably, the smiling face of the island’s indefatigably cheery heroine, Anne of Green Gables. But while Lucy Maud Montgomery’s fictional Edwardian character maintained her Pollyanna disposition on the strength of nothing but her spunk and a cheerily romantic vision of how life should be, it seems modern-day islanders have discovered another way to smile through the summer and avoid the blues during the bleak local winters.

Try to read it starting at the second line, and see if you can make it through without a breath. Then he gets into describing a "lurid" story in The Guardian... really, "Hey everybody, watch out for grow ops" isn't that damn lurid.

Want to see something lurid, how about this description of PEI, describing four city police forces (there are really only two) and "dry" communities in PEI. I live in a territory with actual dry communities, and there is not a dry community on PEI, unless they mean without a liquor store in the community... just drive for 15 minutes, you'll hit a LC on the Island.

Getting an authoritative picture of the province’s pot industry is difficult.

No kidding, especially when you are writing from Boston and can't get simple facts right, like the amount of cops and the legality of alcohol.

The writer also says that PEI pot is fueled by cheap electricity from Quebec... untrue, so untrue.

something that may be deep-rooted in the largely libertarian attitudes of PEI and the Maritimes in general.

So, are Islanders "largely libertarian" or are they scared of the big bad dope growers? Anyone who has lived in the Maritimes can attest that the residents are far from libetarians.

Then the writer quotes The Guardian's comments section... because anonymous message board posts are clearly the best look into a community's psyche.

Officialdom is not immune to such sentiments either. In July 2003, when Marc Emery, a Vancouver activist on a crusade to make pot legal in Canada, performed his trademark stunt of getting high in public, Charlottetown police looked the other way and refused his invitation to arrest and prosecute.

That part is true, but they are adding motive where none exists. Emery wanted to get arrested, and the City Cops couldn't be bothered to arrest him.

The City Cops really don't much care about weed. I remember being outside the backdoor of a wellknown Charlottetown nightclub with a group of people who were, as Black Thought would say, "huffing on the tenth letter".

A woman officer for the Charlottetown PD started making her way carefully down the alley, acknowledged us, and kept on creeping.

We found out the next day that there had been a stabbing a few blocks away and she was chasing the stabber. Good work City Cops, keeping your eye on the ball.

Why give Emery any more free publicity?

Many of the mainstream farmers Nabuu represents — for the most part a prosperous bunch in this “Garden of the Gulf” — aren’t paying much attention to the burgeoning industry.

This one gets a big FUCK YOU from me. PEI's farmers are not prosperous. A few factory farmers are for sure, but I've visited with potato farmers getting less than one cent a pound.

If you are going to make sweeping statements about a province, at least show up, douche.

The article finishes with:

Alan R. Earls is a Boston-area writer. He can be reached atearls_alan@yahoo.com.

He can also go fuck himself... not for promoting PEI Red-Hair, the jewel of the Million Acre Farm, but for taring the province with a brush -- weilded without art, grace, style or substance -- and he couldn't even be bothered to visit.

Mea Culpa

This is a great case of reporter correcting a mistake in as big a font they made it in, regardless if the error is their fault or the fault of bad information.

The Charlottetown Guardian reported on the axe weilding incident I posted about earlier. Following the publication of that story, their comments section was filled, including one well written post from a young woman who was on the bus. She told a different version than the one provided by the police.

Now the police are changing their story, and the reporter has to wear it... and she does, while pointing out that the mistake wasn't just hers. The mighty fire axe scandal continues to fill up a news vacuum on PEI.

And watch the police blame the school board... behind political patronage and 100 per cent hindsight, finger pointing may be the third strongest PEIism.

Here is the story:

Police start from scratch in axe probe
TERESA WRIGHT
The Guardian

City police are “starting from scratch’’ in their investigation of last week’s incident on a P.E.I. school bus in which one student tried to strike another with the emergency fire axe, after some information initially reported publicly has been challenged.

Deputy Chief Richard Collins told The Guardian Monday some of the details originally released by the Eastern School District last week have since been contradicted by parents of children on board the bus at the time — as well as some of the students themselves.

This led to Collins giving the media reports last week on the incident that may not have been exactly as they occurred, he said Monday.

“The information that we were given on Friday was information that was afforded us by a representative of the Eastern School District,’’ Collins said.

“That information was very cryptic, very sparse. But it was information we felt was part of their investigation of this whole incident and what they were doing internally as a school district involving these kids.’’

Since then, parents of one of the students have contacted police with another take on the events that occurred on the Eastern School District bus last Wednesday.
It all started when a 17-year-old male student was hit by styrofoam Nerf darts thrown by some other students.

On Friday, Collins told The Guardian he believed this student felt he was being bullied by two students throwing the darts.

Then one of them stood up to collect their darts.

“He apparently went back and threw that student to the floor of the bus. Another student intervened and allegedly punched him,’’ Collins said in an interview last Friday.

That’s when he went to the front of the bus, grabbed the axe and started toward the back of the bus.

But parents of one of the two implicated as the dart throwers have since come forward, telling police their son was an innocent bystander who got caught in the crossfire.

“What the parents are saying is — ‘No, what happened is the dart was shot, my son had picked up the dart and was bringing it back to the rear of the bus when for some reason the guy with the axe saw him . . . grabbed him and threw him to the floor,’’ Collins told The Guardian Monday.

“There is an assumption that their son was a bully or one of the bullies that started this whole thing unfolding.’’

It was also initially reported by the Eastern School District that the student with the axe walked toward the back of the bus and lifted the weapon in preparation to hit the boy with the axe’s wooden handle.

Now, a number of eyewitnesses are saying he was actually holding the axe as someone would when going to chop wood.

Collins said police are now going back and revisiting all details before making any decisions on charges.

“I’m not totally happy with the way this unfolded from our perspective. We were afforded very sketchy information on Friday.’’

Police were not formally involved until Friday morning, and were given very little information to go on, Collins said. They were given only the name of one person involved — the student who had the axe.

“We never even had the names of the other students involved in this altercation on the bus. We didn't know about it until well after it happened. I’m not trying to be critical here, but I really think any information that was given by them should have been exact, should have been detailed and should have been substantiated. Because today we find ourselves starting from scratch because we had nothing.’’

When contacted for comment on the issue, Eastern School District superintendent Sandy MacDonald said he is not handling this file.

It’s in the hands of Eastern School District’s director of student services Adrian Smith, who was out of his office Monday. MacDonald was surprised police would be upset by the process followed in this incident.